Serial entrepreneur Bill Moore on why he left retirement to join secretive audio startup Human

Even after two decades of entrepreneurship, taking the plunge with a new startup still feels a little crazy for Bill Moore.

Back in the 1990s, Moore turned friends’ and colleagues’ heads when he abruptly ended a successful run at booming Starbucks to work at a tech startup called Sierra Online. More recently, Moore was enjoying retirement when he heard the siren startup song again and in May decided to join Seattle-based Human as its chair and president.

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The mysterious audio startup has been slowly emerging from a stealthy beginning after raising $5 million in venture capital back in April. The founders had turned to Moore hoping to tap not just the career lessons he’s gained from his time at four tech startups, but his experience at Starbucks, where he helped drive the coffee chain’s rapid expansion and was credited with helping to develop the Frappuccino.

“I tend to move early toward places where I think things are headed,” Moore said in a recent interview with VentureBeat. “And that’s what I’m doing here.”

Human was founded in 2014 by Benjamin Willis and Joe Dieter and has been dropping visual hints that it is developing a new type of headphones that cover the ears. The company, however, notes that the product goes far beyond that and revealed a few more details in May.

The gadget was described as a “total-encapsulation” design that attaches snugly to each ear with no additional cables or wires. The device will let users control the amount of outside sound that filters in. It will allow for a shared, simultaneous listening experience with other users. And it can be used as an external speaker for public listening. There was also a reference to breaking language barriers with the device.

“The idea is that it almost becomes a second skin on the ear,” Moore said. “And there’s a number of reasons we’re going to that form that we will begin to reveal.”

He said the company will continue to be cautious in sharing details, because as development continues, it wants to make sure it isn’t promising any features or experiences it can’t deliver.

“We’re slowly emerging out of stealth mode,” Moore said. “There’s a lot more that will be revealed over the next 90 days. We’re treading cautiously because we don’t want people to think this is just vaporware. We don’t want to over-promise to the consumer about this product.”

Human is just the latest unexpected turn in a career that began when Moore chose to take a job at Burger King rather than going to medical school. It was a gig that he credits with teaching him a lot about managing suppliers, pleasing customers, and developing operational efficiencies. In short order, that led him to a job at a small but ambitious Seattle startup called Starbucks.

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When Moore joined, pre-IPO, Starbucks had about 100 stores. In running Starbucks’ food and beverage operations, he helped oversee an expansion to 700 stores, as well as branching the company into food and specialty drinks, like the Frappuccino, which was based on a recipe the company acquired. By 2012, Starbucks was selling $2 billion worth of Frappuccinos annually.

In 1995, however, Moore felt himself attracted by the growing buzz around tech startups and the internet. So he walked out of his job at Starbucks to join gaming site Sierra Online as a general manager.

“I think my colleagues thought I was absolutely insane,” he said. “And my parents tried to talk me out of it. It wasn’t obvious to anyone around me.”

It was a pattern for Moore that continues today. He loves technology and gadgets. But he also loves to dive into things where he’s not an expert and has to learn quickly. Sierra was eventually sold for $1 billion to CUC International.

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By 1999, Moore was ready to move on to his next challenge: He was hired as CEO for Allrecipes.com. It was tough timing. Moore describes himself as the “hired gun” who was brought in to make operational and fiscal sense out of someone else’s idea. Of course, the dot-com bust loomed, and just keeping things afloat proved a struggle. Eventually, however, the company lasted long enough to be acquired by Reader’s Digest in 2006 for $66 million.

This led to Moore’s first retirement, which was interrupted by a call from a friend named Fred Warren. Warren is an investor who is known, among other things, for having made an early bet on Apple. Warren asked Moore to discuss a new company called Root Wireless. What started as some consulting landed Moore in the CEO seat and led to the company changing its name to RootMetrics.

Moore’s focus on wireless insights and analytics put RootMetrics on a growth path that led to its acquisition by IHS in 2015 for an undisclosed sum.

After having barely time to settle into his second retirement, last fall Moore was again asked by a friend to have coffee with a couple of entrepreneurs: Willis and Dieter.

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The idea, again, was that Moore would offer some advice and mentoring and would start in January in a consulting role.

But Moore has a mental checklist he’s developed over the years with things he believes that a startup needs in order to succeed. These include not just a good idea, but good timing, and the ability to execute. There has to be a strong management team, good chemistry, and a distinctive brand.

“Having the right people involved stacks the deck in favor of success,” he said. “I’ve seen some very good ideas fail because the people involved have gotten in the way.”

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In talking to the Human founders, Moore realized that many of the elements were in place for what he felt would be a breakthrough product and company. It didn’t hurt that he is an audiophile.

In the past few months, the company has slowly been building social media buzz via Instagram and Facebook, with provocative photos of partially clad models wearing the mystery gadgets. Behind the scenes, several dozen employees are at work developing the final version, with a tentative goal of starting presale orders later this year, Moore said.

The project is sufficiently attractive to have raised funds from a group of names that have been closely associated with Moore over the years: Warren and his firm, Brentwood Associates; Kurt Beecher Dammeier of Sugar Mountain Capital, who had invested in RootMetrics and AllRecipes.com; and Daniel Darling, managing director of Darling Ventures of San Francisco.

More intriguingly, perhaps, is that Moore says the headphones are just a starting point for a company with bigger ambitions. He said headphones, despite advances, have remained mostly the same in terms of function over the years, making it a market ripe for disruption and a good first target for Human.

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“We don’t see ourselves as being headphones,” he said. “We see ourselves as being a heck of a lot more than that…. if you step back, headphones look silly. But we’ve gotten used to it.”

Where the company will go from here, Moore wouldn’t say. One thing he’s learned over the years: It’s important for a company to get its first product right if it wants to earn the long-term trust of customers.

“I think what we’re doing really positions the company as a technology innovator,” he said. “The first product is an audio offering. We’re small; we’re focused on this. We think this is the tip of the iceberg in terms of where we can head. But we have to nail this first.”